Eugene Weekly : Bravo : 1.04.07

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February 24, 2012 - 1:00am

Bravo Spring 2007

Smooth SailingHow IATSE members hold the Hult togetherBY SUZI STEFFEN

On Christmas Eve afternoon, as the last production of the Eugene Ballet Company's The Nutcracker ends at the Hult Center, stagehands swing into motion. They know the set well; they've worked on it for the past eight years, but still — someone has to get the small ship off the box for the balloon; someone has to pack up the comforter and pillows from Clara's bed; someone must take apart the clock and store it correctly. As other people run around preparing parties, exchanging gifts or spending quality time with new Wiis, the members of IATSE Local 675 work into the evening to tear down the set. And they're coming back the next day.

Caroline Barnes holds the hands of a very large puppet from The Nutcracker

"We haven't had to work on Christmas Day in a while," Virginia Sands comments in mid-afternoon on Dec. 25. She's wielding her adjustable wrench to unscrew one of many C-clamped lights on a long metal pipe (a bar) which has been lowered to the deck (aka "stage floor," for non-theatrical types). She checks a piece of paper on a music stand so she can move lights according to the Eugene Opera's "plot," the lighting design for The Pirates of Penzance. Near Sands, Ruth Atcherson and Janelle Lesan move quickly and securely along other pipes, taking off and setting down the various light boxes with ease. Stage right, in what an audience would see as the left wing if an audience were ever able to see the world of backstage, audio engineer Jason Wells bawls out, "Right truss coming down!" The truss is extra storage for lights, and more "meat racks" of lights stand at the ready upstage, near a storage area with a taped IATSE logo.

Technically, it's the IATSE, according to the union's website, and that stands for (deep breath) the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada. Just in case that's not clear: "We are costumers, hair and makeup artists, set builders, painters, propmakers, lighting technicians, sound engineers, riggers and flyrail operators," says business agent Mike Carpenter.

Everything that's done backstage at the Hult, in other words. For instance, The Nutcracker was on tour across Idaho until just before it played at the Hult, and the touring version, with a smaller set, had to join its larger sister set in Eugene. When the EBC's truck arrived, IATSE workers were ready to haul in the Christmas tree, costumes, props for the dancers and other important bits. And they made sure the stage was safe for performers. Longtime IATSE member Jim Rusby noticed a frayed bit of rope on the balloon and wrapped electrical tape around it so no costumes would catch, no hands get rope burn. "We make sure things are tied up and taped down," he said, as other stagehands fed weighted metal pipes through the bottom of the backdrops. "There's a tendency for the backdrops to blow towards the house," John Loomis explained. He winked and said, "We call that the suck." And no dancer wants to be caught in the suck.

When some of the pipes ran too long for the backdrop, Loomis and Carpenter and Doug Beebe sighed and backed them out; random pieces of metal sticking out in the dark backstage area would be a disaster. Of course, they've seen their share of disasters: Ripped pants in the middle of a performance, fog machines gone crazy and all kinds of other, er, experiences. Not that the audiences would know that. "We tread lightly and make a show flow seamlessly so that you don't notice anything but what a wonderful performing arts experience you're having," wrote Atcherson last September in a handout for the IATSE booth at the Eugene Celebration.

The Nutcracker comes off without mishap. There's always backstage drama, of course. Caroline Barnes had to sew an ear back on the dragon in the time between the kids' rehearsal, which takes place during intermission, and the time the dragon had to be back onstage about 20 minutes later. Working with a flashlight and "trying not to mess with the flow of what happens behind the scenes," she says, she managed to get it fixed in time. Indeed, the watching children and families never knew a thing about it. "That can be sort of exhilarating!" she says.

Jim Rusby (l) and Mike Carpenter (r) maneuver the Nutcracker tree

Barnes remembers her trial by fire at the Hult: After creating costumes for two of the Hult's "user groups," she got her first call in 1992 when what she diplomatically will only describe as "a rock band" was playing. While loading in their equipment, the band's roadies ripped a hole in a huge black backdrop. "I remember being in the corridor with this industrial sewing machine and being under the gun, like, they needed it hung yesterday," she says. She kept pushing what seemed like endless material through the massive machine. And when it was finally finished, she wondered if work would be like that all of the time.

Answer? No, it's not all adrenaline. A lot of IATSE work involves preparation and careful following of protocol; those things above your head onstage are heavy. Most stagehands have degrees in theater and spend three years apprenticing at the Hult to get to know the facility better. John Loomis ("the original stagehand," the others call him) knows just about everything there is to know about the Hult after helping to rig the rope system on the flyrail, which, Atcherson writes, has 93 different linesets.

Why call it a flyrail? In the lore told around the backstage, 19th century stagehands only worked theater in their free time. "We were all sailors," Carpenter says. "The theater could only run during the winter, and that's when sailors had their off-season." Sailors knew how to tie knots, carry heavy equipment, deal with ropes and large pieces of canvas and climb around in high, cramped spaces. "That's why we call it rigging," Carpenter says as he watches Beebe turn into "the fly guy," hauling ropes to bring various pieces of, well, large canvas down from high above the stage.

Eugene's IATSE chapter began in 1929, during the era of silent film, and since then, members have worked at the McDonald and Rex movie theaters, on drive-in movies and at the old Heilig Theatre, not to mention on films like Stand by Me.

On Christmas Day, Sands calls up, "Drop me a box and a line!" Lesan and Atcherson walk along the deck next to their battens (sailor talk for pipes). There's desultory talk about what the kids got for the holidays, what people did in the few free hours between The Nutcracker breakdown and their call today. Up on the flyrail, Bruce Hartnell of Los Mex Pistols del Norte prepares to send Sands the electrical power she needs. Wells and Barnes pore over the plot, laid out on a table off stage right, and Beebe hauls on ropes to bring down more pipes.

It's 4:45 pm now, and, along with movie ticket takers and restaurant workers, the stagehands will be active into the night. "You have to really love theater," says Barnes. "When everyone else is having a party on Friday nights, you can guarantee you're going to be working." The work is paid hourly; it's not a regular paycheck, and of course the bookings are not planned in a regular fashion, so the less active union members rely on a variety of other jobs to balance the irregular hours of working shows at the Hult, OSU, the UO and Lane County Fairgrounds. "Trying to find child care for those hours can be a challenge," Barnes says. But "you make it work with your other jobs."

In her description of IATSE, Atcherson wrote that the stagehands have a love for the Hult Center, which they run as "a large, intricate machine." And, Barnes says, most stagehands can count on one thing: "We have Wednesday mornings off!"

Two Roads to New AudiencesLocal winter and spring concerts reveal different approachesBY BRETT CAMPBELL

The upcoming seasons at our classical and postclassical music venues represent two divergent approaches to enticing needed new audiences. The conservative method tries to lure newcomers to classical concerts with (over) familiar warhorses, in the hope that comfort of the familiar will induce timid listeners to sample some nonthreatening musical comfort food, with no potentially offensive spices or unfamiliar seasonings. Such programming often includes recognizable big-name soloists (your Mas, your Perlmans), on the theory that celebrity appeal to casual audiences outside the core classical orbit justifies their mammoth fees.

Alisa Weilerstein charms Symphony audiences in April

Dawn Upshaw, daring and versatile, sings at the Hult Feb. 17

Another approach prefers substance to star power, relevance to retreads, based on the belief that music is a vital organism with as much to tell us as, say, Beethoven's music said to his audience when it was new, before the ossification of classical music concerts. Organizations that go this route seek to attract open minded listeners who look to the arts — not just old music but also dance, theatre, adventurous rock — for insights into contemporary life and the thrill of the new. It takes time to persuade them that the often stodgy concert hall is a place to find what they're looking for, but the eventual reward is a younger audience — and nourishment for a living art form.

There's abundant recent music available that combines the freshness and relevance of the new and unfamiliar with timeless musical values. Cultivating new audiences while maintaining old ones can be tricky, but this college town boasts far more than its share of artistically sophisticated listeners who crave the excitement of the new. That's why I'm especially anticipating the Eugene Concert Choir and Oregon Mozart Players' Jan. 27-28 concerts featuring Songs of the Earth, for Native American flute, drum, strings and narrator. Not only does this cantata embrace musical elements from outside the narrow range of 19th century European classics (poetry, songs and dance of native peoples, including Teton Sioux, Grande Pueblos, Yokuts Indian, Navajo and traditional Eskimo), it's also written by one of our own, Oregon composer Hal Eastburn. The Eugene Vocal Arts Ensemble will also perform Native American compositions and Euro-American folk repertoire. If these intrepid musical organizations can take a chance on new music so connected to our time and place, we should, too. On March 11, the ECC pairs with another local instrumental ensemble, Swing Shift, in a program of big band standards, with original arrangements for jazz band and chorus.

Much of the Eugene Symphony's season reflects the celebrity/warhorse strategy: Beethoven's fifth symphony, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Mozart's A Little Night Music, flutist fantastique James Galway, diva Renée Fleming. While those shows might suit listeners just dipping their toes into classical music, the year's most interesting ESO concert happens April 19, when the symphony plays Harmonielehre, by America's leading living composer, John Adams; one of Arvo Pärt's contemporary classics, Fratres; and Haydn's sparkling second cello concerto with acclaimed soloist Alisa Weilerstein. The most appealing pure classical orchestra concert looks to be the Oregon Mozart Players' March offering, featuring dance-inspired music by Debussy, Mozart and Bartok, and starring a superior, locally based musician we don't get to hear enough of: UO faculty piano master Dean Kramer, in one of Mozart's finest works, the Piano Concerto K. 271.

America's other most famous soprano, the much more venturesome Dawn Upshaw, comes to the Hult on Feb. 17, her battle against recently diagnosed breast cancer permitting. That show is sponsored by the Shedd, which also has a stellar spring folk lineup: Emmylou Harris (May 3), Odetta (Jan. 11) and Peter Rowan & Tony Rice (Jan. 6).

The University of Oregon's bifurcated Music Today Festival resumes Jan. 26-29, highlighted by the excellent So Percussion ensemble, a show that should appeal to fans of provocative music way beyond the classical core. The superb Tokyo String Quartet's Jan. 11 concert at the UO's Beall Hall leavens Beethoven and Schumann masterworks with a contemporary work by one of today's most engaging composers, Jennifer Higdon. A month later, the Amelia Piano Trio adds a John Harbison piece to its Debussy and Rachmaninoff standards. On Feb. 16, Beall will resound to a different yet no less compelling and sophisticated classical music — from North India, featuring sitar master Kartik Seshadri. And on March 3, world music fans can hear masters of traditional Irish music.

DIVA has become a reliable venue for exploring music's far frontiers; a January 31 event brings performers from Portland and Melbourne, Australia, for an evening of sound and video art.

Jazz fans should already be looking ahead, and north, to February, when the fourth annual Portland Jazz Festival features a tribute to the great classical/jazz label ECM records and a squadron of the world's greatest improvising musicians. We'll keep you posted on that and other highlights.

Mix 'n' MatchWhat's coming to a stage near youBY SHARLEEN NELSON

From classic dramas such as Shakespeare's Othello and Man of La Mancha and tales of Trojan women, sisters and unrepentant serial killers to experimental offerings and quirky musicals involving trailer park living and flying lawn chairs, Eugene's 2007 theater roster should provide enough variety to satisfy just about anybody's taste.

If you need a caption to ID this man, then you definitely need to get to LCC's Othello

Known for tackling difficult and sometimes uncomfortable themes ranging from quantum physics to cannibalism to bestiality, Lord Leebrick Theatre opens Frozen on March 23. A complex exploration of child abuse, murder and the human capacity for forgiveness and remorse, Frozen chronicles the dark journey of a murderer, the mother of one of his victims and his psychologist. Also opening at the Leebrick is Kimberly Akimbo on Jan. 12 and Mother Courage on May 11.

Hmmm … flying lawn chair man or trailer trash? It's a toss up between The Great American Trailer Park and Flight of the Lawnchair Man, two productions from Actors Cabaret of Eugene, which continues its season of the Broadway musical. Flight of the Lawnchair Man, opening in March, is based on an urban legend that, it turns out, is true. In 1977, Larry Walters soared three miles above his Los Angeles home in an aluminum lawn chair tethered to helium weather balloons. It should be interesting to see how ACE brings Walters' wondrous flying feat to the small stage. Described as "South Park meets Desperate Housewives," Trailer Park, which debuts in September, explores through song the high drama and kitschy lifestyle of residents of a Florida trailer park. ACE's other shows include Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down in January, Blue's Clues: The Most Spectacular Place in February and A Year with Frog and Toad in April.

In August, Very Little Theater brings to the stage award-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein's captivating portrait of three Jewish sisters in The Sisters Rosensweig. The works of Wasserstein, who passed away in January 2006, are enduringly funny, smart and thought provoking. Additional performances at VLT include Book of Days opening Jan. 19, Man of La Mancha on March 23 and, on June 1, the comic farce Fortinbras, which re-visions a minor character in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Check out the student-written play Anonymous at the UO's Robinson Theatre in June. In this experimental work, the combined efforts of students and faculty from the theater, dance and art departments perform on the theme of anonymity, exploring the virtual souls that inhabit online chat-rooms in today's high speed, connected culture as well as political questions of privacy and citizenship. The UO also presents The Trojan Women on March 2.

Shakespeare is always in vogue, as you see above, and the student thespians at LCC are sure to deliver an earnest and entertaining performance of Othello on Feb. 2 at LCC's Blue Door Theatre. Hot'l Baltimore is scheduled May 4.